Grimes/Claire Boucher thread

from what I understand, this is out on either the 21st of this month (Arbutus, US and Canada) or the 12th of next month (4AD, most everywhere else). and I hope that previous comments did not imply that I lack enthusiasm. I love Visions a lot, but despite all of the pop aspirations it feels like it was built to inspire obsession from a limited audience.

She definitely has the charm and hooks to pull to a wider audience but her songwriting could use some editing... many times it does sound like the songs drift without any specific purpose and as a whole it drags.

"skin" is very pretty, but a bit insubstantial, tho i guess "insubstantial" is kinda the point. soft, sweet, ghostly. don't hear no afx, but enya sure. and i don't hate enya, but i don't love this. got bored before the 6 minutes were up.

"oblivion" is much more immediate. the nothing lyrics are kind of selling me, "look into my eyes and la la la la la, see you on a dark night". that's great! love the synths at the end, too.

yaaaaaarg, just listening to her stuff now (i'm always way late with everything) and enjoying it a lot. i just took a break from some incredibly bureaucratic shit at work to watch this video and i don't..think..i can go back to work again today

Funny that Alex in Montreal referred to Braids upthread as this album strikes me as something of an electronic equivalent, simultaneously tuneful and spacious and drifting (whereas I think Juliana Barwick is a bit of a misleading point of comparison).

i gave this a few more tries and while there's nothing i actively dislike about her music, neither is there anything hooking me back in - it's all vaguely "interesting", also very unmemorable and lite.

Visions is getting a 4AD release in the rest of the world, but Grimes and BRAIDS and Blue Hawaii a couple of other bands in the same general aesthetic universe were all on the same local label for a few years based out of Montreal.

A bunch of their early stuff is available for download by donation at the Arbutus website, including Geidi Primes and Halfaxa, the first two Grimes albums, and Blue Hawaii's Blooming Summer.

Not that that necessarily implies that they sound *the same* but their music is definitely in conversation with each other.

Of the first two Grimes album, I think Halfaxa is a bit more like this one - it's the clear transition to the kind of thing she's doing now, but I love Geidi Primes - it's a little less cohesive, but there's a lot of cool stuff going on.

The Blue Hawaii tape was one of my favourite albums of 2010 - the standout is 'Blue Gowns'. Blue Hawaii's vocalist = the lead vocalist from BRAIDS which should help determine if it's your thing or if you should steer clear - (aka this is a warning for Lex)

well, it does "rip off" the sacred bones design scheme (general layout, fonts), but also pushes beyond it in interesting ways. and the drawing is wonderful. one of my favorite album covers of the year so far.

I think the album really shows post-everything/Internet music doesn't have to just be some senseless exercise in referencing. like there's the Mr. Bungle/Girl Talk-style, 'yo look what just threw in' approach, but it can be done more selectively. like anything is available, but then you can pick out a finite set of elements with more purpose. this feels really cohesive and harmonious to me, like there's a logic to the aesthetic system she creates, and real emotional resonance (really gets to me actually). could probably work out some cultural meaning in this beyond just 'hey post-modernism waka waka'

She comes across as tremendously likable in the p4k interview I think - love how she invokes all this hi falutin stuff almost inevitably to have a go at herself, and she seems to anticipate a lot of the criticisms that people might want to throw at her without seeming like that's what she set out to do.

i carefully avoid finding out information about them that might turn me off.

no, if i google a new act and p4k AND stereogum are on the first page of results then i consider that a sign. dunno what the fuck "brooklyn vegan" is but with a name like that it can't be a good thing.

glad to see other people liking this so much. was kinda surprised to see some people so meh on it tbh (I mean yeah different strokes - but this is easily turning out to be album of the year so far for me)

To be fair "Genesis" is by far the most cute tune on the album, there are some darker bits that go halfway to matching the cover.

Though in some ways gothstep feels so prevalent as the default move for artsy electro chicks that there's something unexpectedly refreshing-feeling about the combination of eerieness and intermittent cutesiness on Visions.

i struggle to remember to eat but i suck at shit compared to grimes :'D

and yeah just listened to "realiti" today, and last week (it's p much the ultimate rainy humid asian summer song), i think i said upthread something along the lines of it being the most replayable thing i've heard this year and i'm also standing by that vibe

I typed something for a dumb survey at the end of 2013 about Grimes that I was really proud of that I'd like to post if you'd indulge me!

Q: Did you take part in the ice bucket challenge? If not, why not? Grimes declined due to animal testing issues, was the grief she got for that deserved?

Do you think people deserve grief? Do you give people grief when they deserve it? I hope to relieve people of their grief. For a long time I had this theory: the impossibility of a female Kurt Cobain. What he represents, leaning against the system and yet supported by consumers, there was no woman in the world that could command the masses so utterly. The music industry, the male-biased music consuming populace wouldn't let her. This thing I've been stewing about since I saw Grimes play to 20 people in 2011, and started reading her Tumblr, and then really starting feeling when "Oblivion" came out, is that Claire is the closest thing we have to a female Kurt Cobain, smart enough to understand the system but righteous enough to wall-jump away from it. But also, interestingly, what an inversion her approach is to Kurt's. His pose was anti-establishment, her pose is post-structural. He was rigorous, she is always looking outward, game for genre-experimentation and hilarity. I feel like even if I don't like her music, and I do so far, I will always feel like she's several steps ahead of me, several books ahead of me, and that makes me feel really fucking good. Anyone who gives her grief about anything can kick rocks.

a friend of mine subletted her room when she moved out of montreal, she told me some girl named claire had lived there before and made music in the room, but i only found out later it was *that* claire, and only found out while reading that fader interview just now that she recorded visions in it. it was a super small, no window bedroom in a p nast mile-ex apartment on parc